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"The Front Man" Screening and Q&A Presented by the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive

September 25, 2018

The New Brunswick Music Scene Archive presents a screening of "The Front Man" followed by a Q&A with the director and stars at Alexander Library on October 25.

The New Brunswick Music Scene Archive, housed in Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives, is excited to present a screening of The Front Man followed by a Q&A with the director, Paul Devlin, and the stars of the film, Jim and Christie Wood, on October 25 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in the Teleconference Lecture Hall on the fourth floor of Alexander Library.

The Front Man (2014), a documentary by five-time Emmy winner and Independent Spirit nominee Paul Devlin, is an intimate portrait that evolves into a 27-year journey about a man so busy chasing his dreams that he risks missing what success really means.

The focus of this feature-length documentary, Jim Wood, is an everyman middle-class musician burdened by the desire for stardom. Dynamic and abrasively funny, he reveals surprising insight and intelligence as he grapples with the broken promise of rock ‘n’ roll. Jim must reconcile his joy in creating music and his wife Christie’s desire for a child with a culture in which anything short of celebrity is failure.

Jim and Christie’s quest for fame takes us to the homes of acclaimed musicians, inside a legendary recording studio, on the set of a cult horror movie, and onto American national television as well as inside their very personal, but also hilariously candid, discussions about whether or not to have children.

Their pursuit of celebrity becomes a rite of passage, transforming them in surprising ways. Perhaps success isn’t what we expected it would be at all.

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